This is a true story cut from Thank You and OK! but I've changed most
names and it didn't happen on that fictitious island or on that date. We
were right below Mount Fuji. -
DC
Wrote this about 1992. -------edited a bit and put on site 5/18/05. Small
edits 6/28/04.

July 1, 1989 - KURAI-ISHIJIMA

I sat writing a poem in my crude kanji with a brush.
Outside the window were rows of tea plants in a field edged by bamboo,
chestnuts and cedars. In the distance and down slopes was an especially
beautiful view of the Inland Sea, islands floating in calm water and
disappearing into fog banks that obscured the industrial periphery. Kelly
was visiting for the summer and he and I were spending a couple of days at
the besso, country estate, of one of my more outlandish Tokyo
friends, a designer named Omotegami-san who stood behind me exclaiming
things like, "Bold! Exquisite! Honest!"

Omotegami is dramatic and eccentric, in constant search
for the unusual. His hair was shoulder length pulled into a pony tail. He
wore blue jeans, a batik shirt from Bali and a gold post earring. He had
shown me a number of quite interesting establishments he'd designed in Tokyo
- some of the 200 he'd done. He had
me play some songs I'd written on the guitar to his artist friends who'd
gathered there. Then I had to explain each song in Japanese. A hash pipe
was passed around, one of the only times I saw illegal drugs in Japan. I'd
rather not be around it because if I got caught they'd kick me out and my
friends could get in big trouble because generally no one there knows the
difference between cannabis and heroin.

"We will feature you in my nightclub," Omotegami
said.

"Oh I don't perform," I said, "I just
write and play for fun."

"You will have a shaved head and wear a monk's
samue and straw sandals. "

"Oh - no, I wouldn't like that," I answered
unnoticed, "and I wouldn't do it in monk's clothes for sure."

"Everyone will come to see him," he said to
his half dozen friends who went "Ah" and "eh" while
nodding and looking at me smiling. They were dressed casually and the men
all had long hair like Omotegami and Kelly.

I shook my head and pointed at myself. "Not
me."

Kelly leaned back in his chair and laughed at my
predicament.

"The singing American monk," Omotegami said with
satisfaction. "Your first song will be about bringing enlightenment
back to Japan from America!" His friends were clapping. "And
then a song telling the story of the ten ox-herding pictures." The
guy can't stop directing.

"I never write or sing about Zen," I said,
"But I did write a poem about a fish."

Omotegami turned to me suddenly. "A poem about a
fish?"

"Yes, I just wrote it an hour ago. It's in
Japanese." And that's how I came to be sitting at the table writing
it out.

"So noble and straightforward!" said Omotegami
at a new stroke of the brush.

The poor fish. Kelly and I had met it just the day
before.

Kelly and I stood in the wet heat in front of the ferry
building on Kurai-ishijima, a resort island near Maruyama known for its
beaches and black rocks for which it gets its name - Dark Rock Island. We
had two people to look up there. Kelly was fifteen and was in Japan for
his second summer.

"I counted that I know over forty new words
already," he said as we walked across the only busy street on the
island. "I still have my notes from last year." Soon Kelly was
getting help in his language study from a couple of enthusiastic young
ladies in a coffee shop upstairs and across the street from the ferry
landing. They were teaching him new words and phrases and they were
laughing and applauding him when he tried out what he'd learned.

It was fascinating to see grown women, cute and
wholesome, fussing over my son. I'd never seen that before. They were
probably in the eighteen to twenty range but he looked as old as they did.
He'd grown so tall and was handsome with long dirty blond hair in a pony
tail and torn blue jeans.

I looked out over the street scene below, people were
pouring onto the ferry, going back to the mainland of Honshu.

A van pulled up and eight men got out. They were dressed
in bright yellow waist-length hipari, head bands and armbands which
sported kanji, and they wore snappy white gloves. The men spread
themselves three feet apart along the metal railing and faced the exiting
crowd. The men in yellow started bowing deeply and calling out fervently.
It looked like they were pleading for their lives. They were loudly
beseeching the crowd of people to please, please be good to them and vote
for Kuratomi! Ah, electioneering. I could hear them through the shut
window, imploring and thanking people with a sincerity that was hard to
fathom.

Kelly said farewell to his eager instructors and we went
downstairs carrying our backpacks. Across the street the campaigners were
still going at it 110%. "Please! Please! Thank you! Thank you!"

"Rad," said Kelly. "Catch the white
gloves."

A translator friend in Tokyo knew a lady who lived on Kurai-ishijima and owned a
factory on a nearby island. He arranged for us to stay in her company dorm
which was not in use at the time. Two elderly ladies ran the dorm and for
two days they took care of us like grandmothers, preparing our futon to
sleep on, drawing our baths, making us tea and snacks and being lots of
fun to talk to. They said that Yanase-san would return to her home next
door that evening and could see us after dinner.

On the wall downstairs by the dining table was a picture
of a beach stuffed with people on the sand and in the water. I asked the
ladies where that was and they said it was about two hundred meters away.
It was only eleven in the morning. Kelly and I decided to go to the beach.
The ladies tried to stop us, saying that the swimming season didn't begin
until the following week. I pointed out that it was a perfect day to go to
the beach and to swim. It was already hot and the sky was clear.

"It's dangerous now," one lady said.
"There may be jellyfish." I said that their swimming season
didn't apply to hen-na gaijin, weird foreigners. They laughed at
that, gave up and waved to us as we walked off in our swimming trunks. The
water was a little dirty like around LA but it was okay, the beach was
too. A dead fish lay washed up on the sand not far from where we stood. We
surveyed the coastline up and down, hands on foreheads to shade our eyes,
and could count maybe a dozen people.

Yanase sat up with us that night in her guest room and
talked. Kelly got bored because he couldn't understand us and fell asleep
on the zabuton while she and I rubbed each other's feet, an unconventional
scene to be sure. But she was not conventional. She was an outspoken
feminist who detested the male chauvinism of Japanese society. "It
has not been long since we women were no better than slaves," she
said. But she spoke with nothing but praise for her husband, a man
thirty-five years her senior who had died five years before.

"I had decided never to marry, such was my resolve
not to become the property of one of the spoiled mamma's boys they call
"men" in this country. They marry only to replace their lost
mother and to continue being served like royalty. Then I met my husband to
be. He was the shacho, the president of the company I worked for.
He was a man with strong character who treated all of his employees with
deep respect and kindness. After the war when his company almost went
bankrupt, he never laid off a single worker. He took no money from the
company and lived off his savings. I was a young secretary then. I would
have suffered greatly without him. When things were going better he asked
me if I would marry him and promised not to use me as a servant.

"It was he who taught me to respect myself. I
continued working with the company and by the time he died I was the
president. He was the greatest man I ever met. He caught that fish."
She pointed to a framed image of a large fish above a doorway, black on
faded paper.

"That's a painting of a fish he caught?" I
asked.

"Not a painting. When we catch a big fish, a prize
fish, we roll it in sumi (black ink) and then press the imprint on
paper. Later we eat the fish."

"Oh, before cameras were popular we used to stuff
them," I said admiring the ink impression. "This is more
aesthetically pleasing."

The following day our hostess generously showed us
around the island. A friend of hers named Ken-san drove while New Age
space music played from his car's tape deck - lots of long drawn out notes
implying vastness and wisdom - not my choice, but it was peaceful. On the
dash, Ken had a picture of Sri Chinmoy, a smiling guru who jogs, lifts
weights and lives, I believe, on the East Coast of the States.

[visit temple with bamboo garden]

We all went to lunch at a fancy restaurant where we sat
around an interior black marble pond that was stocked with fish. Kelly
pointed out that it also had sharks, a stingray and eels.

"Definitely not recommended for swimming," he
said.

At one end of the pond a chef in a white hat operated,
wielding his chopping knife. Yanase ordered each of us a large
compartmentalized lacquer tray with many delicacies and tasty tidbits. On
the side were rice and miso soup. Kelly and I watched the fish in the
pond. They were all of a good size - up to two feet long.

While we admired the fish an order of tempura arrived
for each of us. Kelly and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows.
"I can do it."

"I still got room," I said

"You like the fish?" Yanase asked Kelly.

"Yeah, they're beautiful. You see that one
there," he said pointing to a fat silver one. "He keeps swimming
up here and looking at me."

"You've only been in Japan a week and you've made a
friend, Kelly. Very good," I said.

Suddenly the silver fish was in the air, twisting about
in a net. Yanase had pointed it out to the chef.

But Yanase would not hear of it. "We can
share," she said generously. I looked up at the chef who was already
swiftly chopping away at Kelly's newfound friend.

"Well, we've been eating fish all week, Kelly. This
one is just a little more personal," I said to console him.

Yanase had been telling us about Shingon Kyo, the sect
of Buddhism founded by the great saint Kukai in the eighth century. She
said that it was called the "esoteric sect" and was often
compared to Rama-kyo (Lama religion - Tibetan Buddhism).

A plate was put before us. It was a whole fish - the
whole fish.

Kelly turned away.

Yanase seemed pleased. She was going all out for us. The
fish had been sliced into many fine strips and yet left in its original
form with the head sticking up. She picked up a piece of its raw flesh
with her hashi, dipped it in a dish of mixed shoyu and wasabi, the
green spicy-hot horseradish paste. She reach over with the hashi and, with
a smile, placed it in my mouth. It melted there.

"Dad ..." said Kelly

"It is very delicious," I said.

"Ikezukuri is the greatest delicacy of all
sushi," she said.

She offered some to Kelly who indicated no thanks, and
then to Ken who reminded her he was a vegetarian.

"Just you and me," she said, taking another
piece.

"Dad..." Kelly said again.

"Just a second. Ikezukuri. Ah, I understand, I said
turning to Kelly. "Ike is pond. Tsukuru is to make, or
in this case, to raise. Ikezukuri in combination. It's fish that was
raised in a pond." I took a piece and dipped it. "Go on and try
it. It's good."

"I'm full," he said with a distant look in his
eye.

"Not pond," said Yanase leaning over and
chewing while she talked. She'd understood my interpretation.

"Not pond?"

"No. Similar kanji but different right side."
She pulled out a pen and drew the character on a piece of paper that one
of the prior tidbits had been wrapped in. "Tsukuru here means to
prepare or to cut. And ike is from "ikeru."

"Ikeru," I said. "Ikeru - to live. Ike -
living."

"Yes," she said, "To slice the living
fish." She laughed and hit it on the head with her hashi and its head
writhed back and forth.

"Ohhhh," I said looking and realizing for the
first time that it was alive. It gulped for air. I turned to Kelly.

"I was trying to tell you," he said. "I
can't believe how unconscious you are. It's been throwing its head back
and forth right in front of you."

"Have you ever been to a Shingon service,"
said Yanase.

"Uh, no, I uh..." Something about the color of
the fish, the pink and white and the grey inner skin where once were
silver scales. All in pieces, and the moving head - it was such raw, pure
suffering. And its eye was on me.

Yanase went on. "It is different from Zen. Very old
and beautiful. In Shingon a person has the three functions of body, speech
and mind, each of which hides secrets that lead to the attainment of
buddhahood." She absently tapped the twitching head with her hashi.

Kelly got up. "I gotta go the bathroom, Dad."
He walked off.

She took a bite. I had no appetite but sighed and took a
bite. She kept talking about Shingon. Kelly didn't come back for thirty
minutes.

"Why did you give the poem away?" Omotegami asked me with irritation. His wife was serving us coffee and toast on the
deck of his vacation home on the opposite side of Kurai-ishijima from the
beach we had swum at three days prior. I'd given the calligraphed poem I
had written about the fish to one of his friends. Omotegami had been going
on about wanting to build a tennis court with a bamboo fence and a woven
seaweed net when he suddenly injected this comment.

"He asked for it. I didn't think it was so
important."

"It was a unique work of art created in a perfect
moment. Will you do me another one?"

"Certainly," I obliged.

He asked his wife who was cooking breakfast and minding
their two-year-old to get his brush, sumi and handmade paper.

I don't remember the lines to the poem. It just told
what happened and ended by saying that thanks to me this poor creature is
gasping for oxygen in hell, and I say "gochiso sama."
(thanks for the treat)

I was halfway through writing it when Omotegami walked
behind me and looked over my shoulder at my handiwork.

"No! No!" he yelled, "Write like you did
last night! Simple, rough, direct! This is clumsy! This isn't right!"
The magic was gone.